Optical scanners capture and digitize images of documents. Most scanners are relatively large devices that are used to scan documents a full page at a time. An example of such a scanner is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,678,075.
Recently, smaller scanners have been introduced. Typically, these smaller scanners are used to scan less than a full page of a document. For example, they can be used to scan sentences or phrases from a document. The data obtained from the scanning process is typically immediately transferred to a personal computer via a permanent wired connection for processing and/or storage.
However, these scanners generally do not store a large amount of data, and, therefore, a user may need to transfer data to another storage device, such as a computer, before obtaining everything they may want or need. In this regard, the user may not be near their computer and may not be able to transfer data out of the scanner in order to clear room in the scanner's storage for subsequently scanned data.
Additionally, a handheld scanner may be one of a number of portable devices carried by a user. For example, a user may carry a cell phone, a scanner, a portable storage device, an mp3 player, and so on. Despite their relatively small size, carrying a number of devices may be cumbersome and inefficient for a user.
Thus, there is a need for a convenient portable scanner.